Patients may have one or more tubular interfacing elements placed in their body for the administration of fluids, nutrients, medications, and blood product, as well as to enable samples to be taken for diagnostic or other purposes. One example is a central venous access using a catheter or central line. As another example, dialysis catheters may be used for exchanging blood to and from a hemodialysis machine from the patient.
Sterilization of such access sites may be performed repeatedly to reduce the risk of infection and to reduce the potential for contamination. Hospital or medical staff may utilize various methods to sterilize the access sites, including alcohol wipes and/or UV exposure, as well as various other approaches.
However, the inventors herein have recognized potential issues with such approaches. For example, the tedious nature of alcohol scrubbing may result in hospital staff being incomplete or inconsistent in applying the process. Further, complete sterilization through a wiping method may be difficult and portions of the potentially contaminated interfaces may not be fully cleaned. Current UV exposure devices may be cumbersome and increase patient discomfort, or be limited in effectiveness due to improper physical couplings. Still further, available UV exposure devices may interfere with and/or damage the access sites so that the usable life of the access sites is diminished, requiring another procedure for replacement of the access site itself.
In one example disclosed in more detail herein, the issues described above may be addressed by a device including a body with a flexible tether and a receiving aperture having a central axis, the body forming a housing for a circular battery disposed with a central axis perpendicular to the central axis of the aperture, and a UV source positioned at an end of the receiving aperture.
In this way, it may be possible to provide a packaged form factor to enable easy implementation of site sterilization with improved coupling and minimal patient interference. For example, by positioning the aperture's central axis perpendicular to the central axis of the battery (or battery stack), it may be possible to locate the UV source in a way that enables efficient packaging and electrical couplings with reduced overall outside dimensions. Such a configuration may even be tethered to the patient via the access site line itself.
It should be understood that the summary above is provided to introduce in simplified form a selection of concepts that are further described in the detailed description. It is not meant to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, the scope of which is defined uniquely by the claims that follow the detailed description. Furthermore, the claimed subject matter is not limited to implementations that solve any disadvantages noted above or in any part of this disclosure.